LAW & ORDER surveys the wide range of work the police are asked to perform: enforcing the law, maintaining order, and providing general social services. The incidents shown illustrate how training, community expectations, socio-economic status of the subject, the threat of violence, and discretion affect police behavior.

LAW & ORDER won an Emmy Award as the Best News Documentary in 1969.

LAW & ORDER was the most powerful hour and a half of television that I’ve seen all year…

–Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

… a vivid impression of (the policemen’s) working lives and through this a complex sense of what it means to be in their position in a large American city… There is the implicit threat of violence in any radio call. Moreover, the cops are expected to dispose of countless routine problems  drunks, accidents, family quarrels  that can’t be ‘solved’ to anyone’s satisfaction and that most ‘decent’ people don’t want to touch.